Instagram hotel marketing is a powerful way to build your brand and boost revenue. Instagram is well-suited to hotel marketing as a social media platform that focuses on sharing images and videos. Through paid ads, quality content, collaborations with influencers, and organic engagement, Instagram gives you plenty of options for promoting businesses in the hotel industry.

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What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing uses platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to promote a business. In the hospitality sector, social media marketing is pivotal. Nowadays, internet engagement is only becoming more important. Social media has transformed every aspect of branding, advertising, and marketing across every sector. More and more people travel for leisure, business, education, or healthcare. People often turn to social media for travel tips and recommendations. They’re also likely to record and share their travel experiences. This provides opportunities for the hospitality industry, both to drive up sales and to gain insights into the needs and opinions of their customers.

What Is Instagram for Businesses?

Instagram for Businesses is a great way to market your hotel. You can convert an existing Instagram account to a business account or set up a dedicated profile for your business. Once you have the Instagram app installed, you will have some powerful marketing tools at your disposal. Your Instagram business profile gives you a public space to express your organization’s values, showcase the best features of your property and services, and engage with potential guests. As well as enhancing your brand’s reach, an Instagram Business account offers two useful features: audience insights and tools for lead generation.

Why Should You Invest Time in Instagram Hotel Marketing?

Instagram marketing can be very powerful because images and videos capture the viewer’s attention. Because Instagram is optimized for mobile platforms, it lends itself to user engagement. Since its inception, Instagram has gone from a modest photo-sharing platform to a hub for creativity and commerce. Artists, photographers, celebrities, and news organizations, as do businesses of all sizes, use Instagram. You can leverage the same features to market your hotel. With an Instagram business account, you have access to features that help you create winning marketing strategies that you can track and evaluate.

How To Make Your Hotel Instagrammable?

Because Instagram is a visual platform, you’ll want to ensure your hotel has features that lend themselves to shareable visuals. This doesn’t mean redesigning, just adding features with the Instagram appeal.

Put yourself in the mindset of your audience. What aspects of your property would you be most likely to share? Perhaps it’s a gorgeous room, an unforgettable view, or a perfectly plated gourmet meal. You can add Instagram-friendly elements, like an eye-catching mural, a beautifully restored feature, or a signature cocktail for your hotel bar. Don’t overlook the Instagram marketing opportunities offered by holidays and seasonal events.

Inspirational Video: Top 10 Instagrammable Hotels – Trending Travel

 

5 Basic Principles of Instagram Hotel Marketing

Keep these elements in mind when you’re planning your Instagram marketing strategy.

1. Strategize to Find A Personal and Consistent Brand Voice

It’s important to keep your content consistent. Content that feels random and disconnected can put off users. Think about the characteristics that define your brand. Is your hotel peaceful and luxurious or fun and energetic? Is it playful and family-friendly or wild and adventurous?

Instagram is saturated with travel content. To capture a viewer’s attention, your content needs to stand out. What makes your property special? Is it the local area or your outstanding facilities? Do you offer unique services or events that people will want to know about? Give people a taste of the experiences on offer.

2. Plan Your Posts Ahead

A consistent long-term strategy is important for Instagram hotel marketing. Think about the type of content you want to include and when it should be posted for maximum effect. Filling your content calendar in advance helps save time and effort later. Create some hashtags and post types in advance, along with posting times. Content can easily be tied into special offers, events or product launches, with posts planned well in advance rather than made at the last minute.

Don’t forget to plan around seasonal events — not just holidays and peak or off-peak seasons. Think about local events you could highlight as part of your content calendar.

3. Take Advantage of the Instagram Business Insights

Instagram offers a statistics-tracking utility via its mobile app. Known as Insights, it can help you discover important information about your audience. Using Insights, you can identify the types of content that generate the most engagement. Perhaps your followers respond well to lively video clips of events and celebrations. Maybe high-resolution images of your hotel’s best views capture your followers’ imaginations. Analyzing visitor behavior lets you fine-tune your strategy, delivering more of the kind of content that your audience values and extending your Instagram reach. You can also use Insights to target your ads more effectively.

4. Use Different Types of Media and Use a Special Visual Style

Instagram users are used to high-quality, visually appealing content. As well as ensuring that you stick to a consistent aesthetic, you’ll also want to ensure that your content is top quality. This means high-resolution, well-composed images and engaging videos. Use different types of media and track which kinds of content generate the best response from your audience. Try to keep all your content cohesive and on-brand.

Your content should give your audience a sense of your hotel’s ambiance and aesthetic. Showcase your best views, your facilities, and your services. You can also post images of the hotel’s immediate surroundings and attractions guests might want to visit.

5. Never Forget the Hashtags and Geotags

Hashtags and geotags are vital for Instagram hotel marketing. They help users to find your content and identify your facilities as meeting their needs. You should come up with branded hashtags as well as widely used generic hashtags, such as #beachfront or #relaxation. Tags specific to your property and any campaigns you’re running will help people curate and share content.

A geotag is the longitude and latitude of a location. Turning this feature on allows Instagram to access GPS information from your device and automatically add it to your photos. This way, users looking for hotels in your area can easily find your content.

How To Maximize the Presence of Your Hotel on Instagram?

A key factor in Instagram marketing is maximizing your reach. You need to establish your presence on the platform, attracting a following who will engage with your content and share your posts. Here are some ways you can do that.

Instagram Stories

Instagram stories let you highlight specific posts to garner more attention. Stories last 24 hours and are a great way to highlight important moments or key features of your hotel. They’re also ideal for showcasing limited-time discounts or giving viewers a peek behind the scenes at your hotel.

If you want more longevity, you can preserve an Instagram story as an Instagram Story Highlight. These offer a way to show off your best stories and make sure that new followers will see them. Your Highlights can showcase promotions, services, and special events, and allow you to link to content outside of Instagram.

Instagram Reels

Instagram Reels allow you to record and post short video snippets,15-30 seconds long. You can edit your video and use creative tools to add backgrounds, audio, and other special effects. Reels are very engaging and can be a real asset in Instagram marketing. These bite-sized video clips capture the audience’s attention and encourage them to follow for more. You can add captions, logos, and product tags to put your stamp on each Reel.

Instagram Explore

Instagram Explore uses an algorithm to curate a collection of content, hashtags, and accounts that will interest users. For example, if many users interact with one of your posts, it might get shown to other Instagrammers. If a user searches for a tag you use regularly, they might see your content on their Instagram Explore page.

Having your content appear on the Instagram Explore page can be tricky. If you can manage it, it can make a big difference to your reach. The key to inclusion on the Explore page is to post high-quality content with careful and specific tags.

Instagram Live

Like Facebook, Instagram allows users to set up a live video stream. This is great for showcasing events, giving virtual tours, or setting up interviews with guests and staff members to talk about your hotel. Audiences tend to respond well to live video. It’s seen as more authentic and more trustworthy than other forms of content. Consider creating live content around your team. One idea might be a live interview highlighting a particular team member each week, explaining what they do and how their role helps make every guest’s stay special.

Engage with Your Audience

Social media is a two-way street. Engaging with your followers is important for Instagram marketing. If your account feels inauthentic — just a series of posts, with no interaction — you’ll rapidly lose your audience’s interest. Interaction lets your followers know that a warm welcome and friendly staff are waiting at your hotel. Giving them a sense of the people behind the images and videos on your feed can help.

There are lots of ways you can generate interaction. Ask questions, elicit feedback, and encourage visitors to leave comments. A simple image with a related question (such as a shot of a nearby beach, with a question like “what’s your favorite seaside activity?”) can generate a lot of engagement.

User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) helps your brand in several ways. First and foremost, it makes your feed seem more authentic — people can see what your actual guests loved about their stay. UGC also encourages more people to follow you, as friends of users will see their pictures and videos and be interested in your hotel. You can elicit user-generated content by offering rewards and prizes for people who post their snaps and video clips with your hashtag.

If you repost other users’ content to your hotel’s feed, get permission first. This prevents any possible intellectual property issues. Most people are flattered that you like their pictures enough to repost them.

Engage with Influencers

High-profile users with large followings, known as influencers, have found a ready source of income through Instagram. You can work with Instagram influencers to generate even more engagement by offering rewards for being featured on their channels. Influencers are Instagrammers with high volumes of followers — sometimes in the tens of thousands — so the right deal can generate a huge uptick in sales for you. Because today’s influencers have high expectations, you’ll need to offer something special if you want to secure their collaboration. A couple of free nights probably won’t be sufficient.

Should You Use Paid Ads on Instagram for Hotels?

Instagram ads offer highly effective personalization marketing. You can easily capture a large and tightly targeted audience without the large outlay involved in conventional advertising campaigns. Facebook is the most popular ad platform on social media; since Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, the ad platforms are integrated so that you can create an Instagram ad campaign from your Facebook business account.

Instagram ads offer both extensive reach and a very high degree of specificity. It’s important to offer high-value ad content and ensure they target the right audience. Good advertising is key to an Instagram marketing strategy, but a sloppy ad campaign can backfire.

Technology Trends in Hospitality

Technology moves fast. This is never more true than in the hospitality sector, especially as COVID has altered the landscape. Automation, custom apps, interactive media, and other new tech innovations are reshaping how people find accommodation, book their stays, interact with the hotel, and deliver feedback. Staying abreast of the latest technology is vital for remaining competitive. In “The Latest Technology Trends in the Hospitality Industry,” you’ll find out about current tech trends and what they mean for you. This article will help you identify the most relevant technology for your business and how it can transform your hotel.

Promoting Your Hotel with Social Media

Social media marketing is important for any business but especially valuable for the service and hospitality sectors. Suppose this article on Instagram hotel marketing has whetted your appetite. In that case, you can learn more about social media and the hospitality sector in “7 Social Media Marketing Tips to Promote Your Hotel”. Learn how to create a cohesive brand identity across a range of different platforms, how to get the most out of different formats, and create a killer social media ad campaign. You’ll discover how to leverage various platforms, from Facebook and Twitter to Pinterest.

TikTok Hotel Marketing

Alongside Instagram marketing, TikTok’s short-form videos can be a powerful element of your marketing toolkit. With TikTok, you can run ads on the platform, showcase your facilities and services, engage with the public, and generate interest in your business. In “TikTok Marketing for Hotels: Tips, Strategies, and Examples,” you’ll learn about TikTok as a platform and its relevance to your business. This in-depth article offers tips and useful examples to help you get the most out of TikTok: how to develop your presence, what kind of content TikTok users seek, and how to build relationships with users and influencers.

Facebook Marketing for Hotels

You probably noticed that Facebook was mentioned a few times. That’s because Facebook is also a powerful platform for marketing any business, especially a hotel. Travelers use Facebook extensively when planning and booking their trips, making it an important platform for the industry. In “Facebook Marketing for Hotels: How Facebook Can Drive Sales,” you’ll learn how to use Facebook to boost brand awareness, generate sales, and turn one-time visitors into loyal repeat guests.

Instagram hotel marketing is one of the top hospitality trends today. With quality content, a well-crafted ad campaign, and user engagement, Instagram can propel your business to new heights. Note that Instagram users can now book hotels directly from their Instagram accounts, making it an even better way to generate sales.

More Tips to Grow Your Business

Revfine.com is a knowledge platform for the hospitality & travel industry. Professionals use our insights, strategies and actionable tips to get inspired, optimise revenue, innovate processes and improve customer experience. You can find all hotel & hospitality tips in the categories Revenue Management, Marketing & Distribution, Hotel Operations, Staffing & Career, Technology and Software.

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This article is written by:

Martijn Barten

Hi, I am Martijn Barten, founder of Revfine.com. With 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry, I specialize in optimizing revenue by combining revenue management with marketing strategies. I have successfully developed, implemented, and managed revenue management and marketing strategies for individual properties and multi-property portfolios.